Judge extends Oz PS3 mod dongle ban

The Australian Federal Court has maintained the injunction banning four local retailers from importing and selling the PSJailbreak USB dongle that allows PS3s to play pirated games.

Two of the defendants, OzModChips and Ryan Emmanuel Caruana, both stated their intention at a hearing this past Friday to tell the supplier of the the PSJailbreak that all outstanding orders be delivered direct to Sony's lawyer.

PSJailbreak Devices, the organisation behind the dongle, was identified by the court as Chinese company China Sun Trading Limited - at least, that's the company that's the owner of the Honk Kong bank account OzModChips and co. paid into to get their dongles.

The judge, Justice Dodds-Streeton, reaffirmed his previous ruling that PSJailbreak must not be imported into Australia by the defendants, who must not distribute the product to anyone else in any way.

Any dongles they already have must be handed over to Sony's lawyer.

The case is now adjourned until 9 September at the earliest, on which date any of the parties can give 24 hours' notice that they wish to take it further. That includes requests by the defendants to have the ban lifted, and for Sony to request damages.

The respondents present at the 3 September hearing accepted the court's orders without admission.

Even so, Sony has, for the moment, blocked PSJailbreak's sale Down Under. It's true that code which does almost all that the PSJailbreak did is freely available, but its use is beyond many a would-be player of ripped off games since it requires both compilation and tweaking to allow pirated games to be played - as it stands, the code does not permit this. ®